In Lieu of the Expressionist

Elegy for Moonlit Reminiscence

I cling to the sheets which hang half off the bed.

It's cold in here alone, laying in the dark with

Nothing except my thoughts to keep me company.

It's been days since you left--

Or weeks or months or years.

I can't recall the last time I saw your face,

The light you once brought me, now hazy.

The winter air seeping in from the open window

Grazes my exposed skin and I swear I can feel

My cells reconstruct the memory of your fingertips.

I left my window open in the hopes that you would

Climb through it like you used to do when we first met,

It functioning like the gateway to a heaven denied to us.

My pillow is wet, like my face, from tumultuous nights

Spent wondering when you'd come back.

You always said that I worried too much as you wiped

My cheeks and wrapped me in your arms.

The absence of you/your warmth/your reassurance

Leaves me shivering, though whether from the cold

Or the emptiness I do not know.

My love, I look at the shadows as they fall across the floor,

Wondering if the night is meant to be this lonely.

It is quiet now, in this dark hour, my sobbing long stopped

And giving way to tremors in this unsteady mountain that is me.

I'd become so accustomed to the music of your breathing,

To the predictable beat of your heart as I laid upon the ocean

That was your chest--now, I fear that I am adrift in the unknown.

The moonlight passes over my face and I close my eyes,

Imagining the way you made me feel at peace in moments like this.

I don't want to fall into sleep yet, though I know my tired body begs to.

I don't want to get lost in dreams of you and me again only to wake up

And be confronted with the bleakness that is now my life.

Even now, I still hold no anger towards you, merely love transmuted

Into deep and immovable sorrow. Why you left me, I cannot comprehend,

But my ache for you is a feeling all too real.

The sun will come in the morning and with its rays will be the beckoning

Of moving on with life--but right now, with the moon overlooking me

And with the wind swirling in my room like the emotions resonating

In this cavernous me, I want to feel all of this.

Want to soak it up and let it fill me to the brim.

I will never know why you left me--will never gain closure on this chapter

In my story--but I know that I will be able to look on it years from now

And say that I lived, triumphantly. This pain is an immutable factor in the bedding

That will one day sprout me reborn, and maybe then I will finally come to fruition

With a new sense of self. But right now, in my half exposure to the biting cold

In the quiet dark of my bed, I will lay with tear-stained face and feel everything.